For a non-blind patient with diabetes, the process of taking a blood sample with a glucometer is relatively easy due to their ability to visually guide themselves through each step: choosing a place to pierce the skin, lancing that chosen point, and then ensuring that the blood gained from lancing the skin is able to be appropriately placed on a glucometer test strip.
Poorly-managed diabetes can result in diabetic retinopathy which causes gradual loss of an individual's retinal field, thus there can be a correlation between diabetes and blindness. Other diabetics may be blind by other means. A blind or otherwise visually impaired diabetic can easily choose a point on their person to use as a testing site and lance that point, but a problem arises when the visually impaired diabetic is unable to find that miniscule spot again and align it properly with a small test strip so that the blood is drawn into the test strip. There are some simple methods that the blind or visually impaired diabetic can use to find the spot again, such as trying to line up the end of the test strip with the specific area based on memory, or using an ad-hoc home-made method that orients and places the test strip in the same direction that the lancet was pointed. However, those home-made and mental memory solutions do not guarantee that the blood will get to the test strip, and the use of those methods will most likely result in smearing the blood sample into the skin test site until it is either too small to use or it is impure, leading to inaccurate readings or the need for another lancet piercing.
Blind or otherwise visually impaired diabetic patients often waste many test strips attempting to obtain one valid blood glucose reading. These individuals usually require assistance from others when measuring their blood glucose levels or they risk wasting expensive test strips for which only a certain amount are provided each week by insurance companies.
There are devices on the market that perform both lancing and testing in an automated fashion. However these devices, such as the Gio glucometer (Eric Forman Gio glucometer), do not integrate the lancing and testing steps and rely on the user to visually guide a blood sample onto a test strip. Electronic glucose meters featuring synthesized speech, such as The Prodigy Voice Blood Glucose Meter, are intended for use by visually impaired diabetics by informing the user of the resulting numeric measurement through audio cues (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/547,400). However, users of these devices still cannot successfully coordinate the transfer of blood to the test strip without excessive blood drawing or external assistance.